Taking Back Sunday's Matt Rubano on flying mics, MySpace, Boston, and playing bass with Shaq
By VICKI G. SIOLOS | June 22, 2006
TAKING BACK SUNDAY |
After seven years and two albums on Victory Records, Taking Back Sunday’s hard work has paid off — their new album LouderNow, on Warner Bros., debuted at No. 2 on the Billboard charts, and their latest tour finds them playing huge venues (like the parking lot of the Tweeter Center in Mansfield, where they’ll show up June 24). Having risen from the class of Long Island post-hardcore bands that even your mom has taken to calling “emo,” they’re now a band with a rock and roll work ethic and aspirations to pop greatness. Making the jump to a major label has brought a new set of anxieties, but the band has channeled that creative tension right back into their music. Singer Adam Lazarra has said of Louder, “This album is about struggling to figure out where the hell we all fit in.” Ask bassist Matt Rubano, though, and he’d probably tell you the only thing TBS has to fear is TBS itself: on a recent tour date in London, Lazzara accidentally smacked him in grill with a microphone. But that was a distant memory when the Phoenix caught up with Rubano by phone from the West Coast. While shaking off the cobwebs and imbibing his morning coffee, Rubano chatted about flying mics, MySpace, his school days in Boston, and playing bass with Shaq.
So how’s your face?
[Laughs] My face is doing well! I’m all healed up. I had a half dozen stitches put in, and was able to recover pretty quickly. What actually ended up happening was I got hit during the first song of the set, and was able to make it back on stage by the middle of the second song. So, really, I lost only about a minute or two of actual music. It was not pleasant! I had to finish the show with my head wrapped. It wasn’t that big of a wound, but you know, your forehead bleeds like crazy. There’s actually a video of it on our official site. That Webisode has some actual footage of me laying down, and now that I watch it I only thought I went down for a quick second, but in the actual footage I’m down for five or ten seconds, laying there motionless and not sure what just hit me.
TBS has been touring through many cities. Is there anything in particular that stands out about Boston?
Well, for me in particular it stands out because I also went to school in Boston. I went to Berklee for about a year and a half to two years. Being in Boston is cool because I have tons of memories. After I left school, I moved back there for one summer when I was about 22, and that was when I began my heavy touring. Boston is also filled with memories for us as a band. We did the 10th anniversary Warped Tour in 2004, and that was tremendous. We also played on Landsdowne Street, and the audience started a pretty sweet “Yankees suck” chant in the middle of the gig. I don’t know why that happened because though there are a few sports fans amongst us, we’re not that kind of band. No one had even mentioned baseball, and at a pretty non-descript point of the show -- about 8 or 9 songs in -- the entire audience just started chanting, “Yankees suck!” So, yeah, it’s always fun to go to Boston. Something interesting always happens.
Related:
Saturday's night's alright (for Sunday), Emo corps?, Suddenly, last summer, More 
- Saturday's night's alright (for Sunday)
In gestures that pass for typical punk fashion, tens of thousands of TBS fans showed the extent of their enthusiasm by pelting each other with anything they could get their grubby little hands on and stepping up the shoving match in the pit every time the band played a radio single. Slideshow: Disorientation 2006, September 9, 2006.
- Emo corps?
The familiar sounds of Nirvana’s Nevermind are wafting out over the PA inside Fuse’s midtown-Manhattan studio, but few of the fresh-faced kids gathered on this April afternoon for a taping of the music-video network’s 7th Avenue Drop seem to recognize the songs.
- Suddenly, last summer
The dynamic between Taking Back Sunday's eccentric singer and his audience is still preacher-to-choir -- it's just a much bigger choir. Slideshow: Taking Back Sunday at the Tweeter Center
- Emo corps - side
- Pet Projekt
What Gerard Way, lead singer of My Chemical Romance, had to say about the upcoming rock/hip-hop tour, pyrotechnics, and anti-ambition.
- The Color Fred
It shouldn’t come as any surprise that Bend To Break sounds a whole lot like Foo Fighters.
- DIY all over again
Cut from the earnest and emotional mold of bands such as Taking Back Sunday, Coheed & Cambria, and our own Monty Are I, the Coming Weak is one of the area’s fastest-rising combos.
- Suffering bastards
A once-in-a-gothtime team-up of dark princes yields sweat, special EFX, grandeur. Slideshow: Nine Inch Nails at the Tweeter Center
- Going on sale: December 29, 2006
Breaking news from the concert-ticket trade
- Transformers
If Transformers the film is a feature-length GM commercial with a sci-fi narrative, then Transformers: The Album is equally shameless.
- Synapses firing
Back on Monday August 14, when Kenmore Square was the usual pre–Red Sox game Tasmanian clusterfuck, a smaller but no less devoted crowd began to form outside Avalon. Receiving End of Sirens, "Planning a Prison Break" (mp3)
- Less
Topics:
Music Features
, Entertainment, Taking Back Sunday, Phoenix Suns, More
, Entertainment, Taking Back Sunday, Phoenix Suns, The Mars Volta, Shaquille O'Neal, Common (Rapper), We Are Scientists, Adam Lazzara, Head Automatica, Matt Rubano, Less
